Earth Day Games

The following is a list of free interactive games that focus on Earth Day concepts of taking care of the environment, cleaning up litter or recycling.

Clean Up Your World

Every Day is Earth Day

Clean Up the Park

Free the Beach

Dora's Mermaid Adventure

Spring Babies PowerPoint

My classroom has the luxury of being equipped with an ActiveBoard. I am planning on using this powerpoint to teach new vocabulary about spring babies. If you don't have a projection screen, Smart Board or ActiveBoard; you can just print, laminate and bind the book for use at circle time or in your library center.

You can download the book here.

Free Printable Emergent Readers

On one of my yahoo groups there has recently been a thread talking about sight word readers.

There are many free resources available on the web.

Here are a few:

Carl's Corner
(Kindergarten emergent readers)

Samples from Reading A-Z
(a few free samples, for $50ish access to all of their books)

Hubbards Cupboard
(40 or so free printable books)

Make Learning Fun
(not all sight word based, but a lot of emergent themed printables)

Mrs. Meacham's
(awesome page with printables and more links)

Kinderprintables

Marcia's Lesson Links

Mrs. Jones Room
(lots of links to many other resources)

http://www.childcareland.com/free.html
(scroll through and look for "book" in the item descriptions)

http://mrskilburnkiddos.wordpress.com/reading/sight-words/
(scroll down, there are links to books she created in the middle of the post)

Memorable Moment #6..Perspective..

"It's all a matter of perspective."

I can't remember who said this or where I heard it first, but this week this was certainly proven to be true.

Think about the following scenario from the point of view of the teacher, then think about this scenario from the point of view from the parent.

My friend has a four year old little girl in her self-contained special needs pre-k class. This little girl has developmental delays in the communication and social/emotional domains. We'll call her Lilah.

We were out on the playground and Lilah comes running over to tell the teacher that Billy was climbing up the slide. Her teacher told her thank you for telling me and called Billy over to talk about safety. If someone is climbing up the slide and someone is sliding down the slide, they could crash and get hurt. We always slide down the slide.

What seemed like two minutes later Lilah comes running back and says Bobby is climbing up the slide. The teacher has another discussion, this time with Bobby.

Low and behold, what seems like two minutes later, Lilah, herself, is climbing up the slide. Lilah had a talking to.

My friend wrote a note home telling mom about Lilah tattling on things that were mistakes and then copying the very same mistake. (My friend was rather frustrated...the little girl had clearly known that climbing up the slide was a mistake.)

Lilah's mom wrote a note back. It went something like this: "I am so proud of Lilah. She is talking so much more and noticing other kids more and more. She's finally doing things that other 4 year olds do. Thanks for all you've been teaching her."

Wow! Something that was frustrating to my friend is proof to the child's mom that the child is making progress.

Perspective.........maybe sometimes we need to look at things from a different point of view. When Lilah's mom wrote that note back, we all sat back for a second and then laughed. The lady's got a point! Four year olds tattle and four year olds push the limits. How nice it was to be gently reminded that sometimes frustrating behavior is typical! :-)